Welcome to Tamriel
by sharleenhale
Summary: After a confrontation with Crowley, Sam and Dean end up in a medieval setting filled with swords, magic, and different races that are not all human. This time, instead of angels and demons, it's Ancient Gods and Daedric Princes they're facing. Dean just hopes they can find a way back before they find out what 'Here Be Dragons' really means.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

In a warehouse, in lower Manhattan, the sun streams through dirt flecked window panes; its rays highlight two figures unfortunately surrounded by twenty. Even with their revisited deal with Death — clean up your mess — the Winchester brothers once again find themselves waist deep in supernatural crap.

"What are you gonna do? Kill us?" Dean boasts, just a tad too stupid in Sam's mind since they are, you know, facing down the King of Hell himself who is now a comrade-once-removed. The smell of sulfur lingering in the air leaves a bitter aftertaste for Sam as he gives suggestive eyes to his brother in an effort to remind the idiot that, although Death will no doubt bring them back (when he feels like it), they can still die. Painfully. It's a fact that Crowley is well aware.

"Kill you? Dean-Dean-Dean, why would I ever want to kill you when you and your brother won't ever do me the kindness of staying dead? Really, one would think an eternity without a Winchester-sized headache was asking too much."

"Uh, sorry," Sam replies, not meaning his words at all, "but dying's not on my to-do list today. Besides, someone's gotta stop you. Might as well be us."

And stop Crowley they must because Death is seriously pissed that Crowley turned out to be even worse than Abaddon in the whole stealing souls department. Oh, yeah, and the Supreme Being is seriously pissed at the two of them for allowing Crowley to live in the first place. Speaking of angry, Sam would still be seriously P.O'd about the whole Mark of Cain debacle as well, but, in the end, they managed to get the damn thing off Dean although Castiel had to willingly take the mark and implode himself (along with the knife) to do so. But Sam tries not to think of the gone-but-not-forgotten angel as Crowley replies to his previous statement.

"As if you could," Crowley sniffs, derisively. "Oh, but there's that hero mentality I've come to treasure about you brothers so. Always trying to save other people's asses when deep down inside you know you'd never do the same for yourselves. Aren't you tired of this game? I know I am."

Changing the subject, Dean quickly asks as his eyes scan the circle of demon henchmen surrounding them, "If you aren't going to kill us, what do you plan to do with us?"

"Now there's the rub, isn't it?" Crowley pauses in a play at stroking his chin in thought. "Can't kill you. Made sure of that bit, didn't you? Having old Death as your master and all. Oh, but slave driver that one. Really, I don't know who has it worse. My mindless minions or you two rosy cheeked cherubs. So ... what do I do with you?"

"You could let us go," is Sam's spoken thought.

"Sorry."

"You could let us gank you," is Dean's.

"Uh, no."

"Hm... Endless living torture?" Crowley shakes his head at his words. "Too old hat. No... Locking you two in a room for all eternity?" The King of Hell rolls his eyes with knowing. "You'd kill each other within the hour and not just to have Death zap you back. No... I need... Yes, I think I need something different, something ... special."

After a moment longer of watching their nemesis quietly pondering their fate, Sam suddenly doesn't like the smile that spreads, warm and revoltingly suggestive, across Crowley's face.

"Oh, yes, indeed," Crowley smoothly croons. "I think I have just the thing for you boys."

Before Dean can even get the word "shi-!" out, Sam and his brother are gone in a puff of smoke.


	2. Friend Or Foe

**_Friend or Foe?_**

The first thing Sam notices is the air; it's hot and humid, like the kind found in an old closet that hasn't been opened in years. However, the space Sam and Dean have now found themselves in isn't a closet at all. A gritty, uneven stone floor lies beneath their feet and solid rock surrounds them with dangerous looking clusters of stalactites hanging far above their heads. Sam ignores their jagged canopy to further take in their surroundings. Their current location seems to resemble some sort of dark underground tunnel? Cave? Lair? Mind settling on cave, he wonders which cave and where, but something else catches his attention that makes him beg a different question.

"Dude, where the hell are w—?"

Dean glares at his brother, hard, above the hand so rudely slapped over his mouth. But his angry expression slowly slips from his face as he watches Sam silently form the words "'I don't think we're alone." Sam next points to a spot over his brother's left shoulder and Dean turns to see a large wooden club with kindling wrapped around it's bulbous end; he quickly understands. The fact that it's set ablaze while pinned to the wall by two scraps of rusty metal is troubling indeed. Someone had to light it and its fellow flickering cohorts seen further down the tunnel, but who? And why? What is this cave and why the hell did Crowley send them here in the first place?

As the two Winchester brothers stand there frowning at each other with unanswered questions lingering in their heads, another part of their highly trained bodies kicks into gear: their ears. Like listening to a conversation with a drinking glass pressed against a wall, they hear faint voices echoing from further down the winding corridor. Snatches of garbled words are what they are able take in, but, unfortunately, neither Sam nor Dean can piece the puzzle together. Still, the clues lead them to believe that other people may be a 'foot and in their line of work that usually spells danger. As one, Sam silently slips fingers around the gun pressing into the small of his back as Dean reaches down to lift the cuff of a pant leg to arm himself with the demon killing knife strapped to his ankle (his usual weapon unfortunately tossed aside during the earlier fight with Crowley's minions).

Careful steps take them further down the pathway half lit by torchlight until they find themselves feet away from the entrance to a cavernous room. Standing there, backs pressed to cold rock and hidden in shadow, if Sam was looking, he could tell that Dean's surprise mirrors his own from the deep part of his brother's lips and the high rise of his brow, but Sam isn't staring at Dean; he's too busy being enthralled with the scene spread out before them, a setting of which Sam is now sure is a ... tomb. Half set in the walls lining the open, circular space are several medieval looking knights with their heads solemnly bowed and their gauntlet covered hands steepled in prayer; large, square-shaped blocks of stone serve as their pedestals and on these pedestals, perched next to the knights' booted feet, are tarnished, 3-pronged candelabras covered in melted wax and lit wicks.

In the very center of the room, extending out from the back wall, is a giant stone staircase, but not just any staircase. Its chipped pathway leading up is wide enough to accommodate five fully grown men standing shoulder to shoulder, but first those individuals would have to get past the two huge, golden lions frozen in mid roar standing guard at its base. What really draws Sam's gaze, though, is the stair's true prize; atop it's landing rests a large, elongated slab of ebony engraved with numerous gold carvings that seem to glitter and glow under the firelight, like stars in a night's sky. Are they... Are they moving? Or is that just some trick of the light?

Now Sam has read many a lore book explaining a multitude of things ranging from Enochian runes, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and even Japanese warding symbols during research for a hunt, but he's never read up on ... _this_. He doesn't even know what to call this. Yet, even as Sam finds himself enraptured, it's Dean who keeps his head in the game. It doesn't escape his notice that even the rope-tethered torches at the lions' feet — that resemble crude Indian style teepees in Dean's mind — are lit as well. Someone has been here, but the question remains...

"Where the hell are they?" Dean asks the thick air around them.

"Right here," it hisses back.

In the next instant, something sends both Sam and Dean's weapons flying from their hands. Before the gun and knife even have a chance to land with a loud clatter on the ground, Dean gets sent face-first into the nearest wall where he bounces off it, hard, with a sickening crunch. Sam doesn't even have time to react to the violence or the possible fact that his brother's nose is now broken, because he's suddenly feeling a blow to the back of his knees from behind. Feet out from under him now, unseen hands are on him and around him and there's a struggle; it regrettably lasts way too short in Sam's mind. In the end, he finds himself lying on his stomach with what feels like a knee pressing painfully into his spine, a hand wrapped cruelly in his hair, and a blade slipping down near his throat. The metal held firmly against his bobbing Adam's apple may be cool, but the breath fanning his cheek is anything but.

"What have we here?" a silky, humorless voice questions as Sam winces from the pain in his scalp and the prick at his throat. "Looters, bandits, or Imperial dogs? You smell too fresh to be simple lost peasants and you don't wear the robes of the Mage's Guild. How shall I flay you then, eh? Quick and easy or slow and painful?"

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about, lady!" Sam hears Dean snarl back,"But you better let my brother go or so help me god! You don't want to know how that ends."

Sam doesn't feel the blade move away. Instead, he feels it press even harder and he can hear the sneer in his attacker's voice. "Not entirely spineless. I like that. You can die last."

Just then, at the top of the grand stairway and in front of the tomb, a bright column of light flashes up from the floor to the rocky ceiling, above. Luckily for Sam, the pillar of white is both blinding and altogether surprising, enough so that his assailant's grip loosens. He quickly uses this moment of opportunity to set himself free. Whoever was holding him gets the sharp point of his elbow to the stomach and then Sam's scrabbling on the ground for his gun. When he finds his feet and turns to take aim, he almost drops his weapon again.

Sam only has five seconds to take it all in before the vision shimmers out of existence behind a thick fog of black, wispy vapor: dark hair pulled back in a severe ponytail, knife-blade shaped ears, dark ash colored skin, and red glowing eyes like twin fires roaring behind ruby gems. This is no human nor any monster Sam has ever seen. And then Sam's seeing something else for the first time as a large figure comes roaring out of the pillar of light.

"Daggers out, Falsis! Flesh Atronachs incoming!" a tall monster garbed in scratched and weathered plate mail cries as it heads for the bottom of the stair at a speed too fast for its lumbering form.

Eyeing the gnarled staff gripped tight in the new arrival's gauntlet covered hand and feeling the crackling energy from the thing's glowing gemstone, Dean yells behind the hand holding his bleeding nose, "What the fuck is this shit? Seriously, where the hell are we?"

Under the helm made out of some horrific creature's skull that's been bleached a yellowish-white, Sam catches a glimpse of a wide mouth with two wickedly carved fangs emerging from the bottom portion of its lips.

"I don't know, man, but we are so not in Kansas anymore," Sam hears himself say like a spectator to the horror.

"Fuck Kansas, Dorothy!" Dean curses, completely baffled and pissed as hell, "I don't think we're even on the same frigging planet anymore!" And then, still stanching the flow from his nostrils, he's spinning around, to the voice heard all too close behind him.

"Vivec guide my blades." Their strange attacker from before materializes from thin air looking worried. She steps forward, around a stumbling Dean. "How many?" she asks the armored monster, no longer paying the Winchesters a second glance.

"Two!" is the roughly barked answer she receives. "And there's still time before the portal closes!"

"Were you able to reach the tome? Did you find a way to weaken Arkranus?"

"Yes and yes, but little help that will be if we let ourselves rot away down here forever."

"We must win this battle then, but not for that skeever-brained noble in charge of Stormhaven!"

"Too right you are, Shield-Sister!"

Wholly confused and eyeing the red-eyed woman and her new fanged companion who is somehow taller and broader than his own Sasquatch of a brother, Dean bellows, "Just what the fuck are you two and what the fuck is going on here? Where the hell are we?"

"Fight or flee" is the ultimatum thrown back at him from the warrior standing at the bottom of the stair. Turning toward the portal now, the armored giant further says as it goes into a fighting stance - feet shoulder length apart, staff out and held ready, "Know that Molag Bal's minions are enemies to us all. So stand and fight, Stranger, or turn and flee, but be warned. Falsis will cut you down before your cowardly feet ever reach the hall."

"Before you take two steps," the one called Falsis corrects with a calmness that speaks leagues of her dead certainty.

Having had a taste of the red-eyed woman's skill already, Sam and Dean are all too aware that that particular threat isn't idle, but what to do? Where are they? Who are these creatures and how the hell do they get back home? Too many questions and not enough time. Isn't that always the way? But their lives are in danger and decisions need to be made. After a moment, Sam and Dean share a quick glance between them and then Dean's speaking up for the group as a whole.

"Don't really have a friggin' choice here do we?" he grates, irate. "But how about _you_ know _this._ After Sam and I save your asses, we walk 'cause we sure as hell didn't come here looking for trouble. For Christ's sake, we don't even know how we got here in the first place!"

The metal encased monster doesn't even spare a second to consider. "If you survive, you are free to go. You have my word as Clan Gra-Yul."

"If you survive," Falsis mirthlessly says as she takes up her own fighting stance ten spaces behind and to the right of her giant of a companion - like she's done this numerous times before.

"What the hell's a Flesh Whatzit anyway?" Dean grumbles to his brother, six paces behind the red-eyed woman and off to her left, as he raises the demon killing knife with steady hands. Off to his side, gun held aloft and trained on the portal, Sam just shrugs.

"No idea, but it doesn't sound good."

After a hair's breadth of waiting, a large, meaty foot steps out from the portal and into whatever messed up plane of existence the Winchesters have found themselves in. When the creature's bloated body follows, Dean sees his answer and his heart sinks straight down to his toes. "Son-of-a-bitch," he groans, eyeing the large spiked mace serving as one of its hands and the three clawed palm emitting fire out of it's other. When its twin steps out from behind it, Dean curses again, "Oh, come on! You have got to be kidding me!"

"Word of warning, the only one you will ever get from me," Falsis says over a shoulder as she continues to lightly bounce on the soles of her feet in anticipation for her turn at battle. "Wait until after Sherrog acts, unless you enjoy the flesh melting from your bones." The smile she next gives makes Sam shiver to the core. "Then again, I may enjoy your screams."

Dean returns her sneer. "Got no problem letting you two run in like pigs to the slaughter. We'll be all too happy to mop up behind you."

"I got a bad feeling about this," Sam says, sweat already dotting his upper lip.

"Dude, who're you telling?" Dean hisses back with a touch of real terror displayed on his blood-stained face. "Do you see these fuckers? Christ, Sam, tell me you have a plan."

"Uh, no," Sam looks back to his crazy brother with brows raised high into his hairline. "You're the one talking trash. I thought you did."

"I thought-"

It suddenly doesn't matter what either of them thought as the metal encased monster called Sherrog slams the bottom of its staff into the ground with a loud bang in front of the first Flesh Atronach. Sam and Dean watch as Sherrog drags in a mighty breath and then releases it behind the crackling gemstone of it's staff. In an instant, it's roaring fire! The slow moving monster made of flesh screams in agony as the tender skin stretched across it's over-sized belly chars a boiling black.

"Did it just-?"

"Yep."

"Dude," Dean sighs with reverence. "that is so cool."

Falsis shakes Dean out of his hero worshipping with a cry of her own before disappearing into her trusty cloud of smoke. "Time to play distraction, Imperials! Not gawk like honey-eyed maidens!"

"We're not frigging Imperials! And I got your maiden!" Dean yells back, tugging on Sam's sleeve. "God, I hate that bitch," he spits, broken nose throbbing with a painful reminder. He leads Sam safely around the zone washed in fire, toward the other monster in the room.

"Think the feelings mutual," Sam remarks as he steels himself for their own battle about to take place. "Seriously, how the hell are we supposed to take this thing on," he asks and his brother has an answer.

"Like this!" Dean roars and then he's doing what he always does when it's his turn to come up with a strategy: screaming and charging headfirst into the fight.

"Goddammit," Sam curses with a slump of his shoulders and his chin hitting his chest. Then, resolve straightens his spine out and he's lifting his gun, taking aim and praying that six bullets are enough to finish the job and that he doesn't hit Dean in the process.


End file.
